Strange Condition
by Caryce Jade
Summary: The story of how Percy met Audrey and they came to be. Who knew that a friend of George's could capture his heart-if she can save him.


**I know I need to be working on Reassembly, but my muse has decided that now would be a good time to take a vacation, so you get this that has been running around in my head for a while. It started with the thought of "Wouldn't it be interesting if Audrey was friends with George before she married Percy?"**

**I don't own this, btw.**

Audrey King scribbled some well-thought notes on a chart, then put the chart in the box that would magically transport it to the Head of Neurology. There had been nothing spectacular about this case. Two of the elderly man's potions had been interacting with each other, causing the seizures. She briefly considered contacting Harry Potter for a cold case from the aurors. She was an Investigative Healer, a very small, but very important department at St. Mungo's. She received any unusual of unnatural cases, or was consulted if something looked "off" about a patient or a body. She often worked closely with the aurors because of the unusual, and especially the unnatural, cases. The pay wasn't super, just barely higher than most of the department heads, and then only because when she had a case that actually involved misuse, illegal activity, etc. she often had to do two sets of paperwork, answer two sets of questions, and send those sets of paperwork to two different places. One was always placed in the patient's chart, the other went directly to Harry's inbox. Eddie, her younger brother and rookie auror, said that her reports always glowed purple if she had marked them "urgent", green if they were in the category of "you need to read this, but if it's a crazy day, it can wait", but if they glowed red, they meant, and Eddie had air-quoted and done a dead-on impersonation of Ron's voice "read me NOW, dammit!". She usually did not send trivial stuff via the office route, maybe a joke to Eddie to brighten his day, and occasional notes to her few friends. She didn't keep in touch with too many people from her house at Hogwarts. Most of her fellow Hufflepuffs had thought her too brainy and too ambitious; a sort of Hermione-lite, as she had heard one of the girls snidely put it when she thought Audrey wasn't in earshot. Having met Hermione in circumstances other than her being two years ahead of her at Hogwarts, Audrey found humor in that assessment. True, they were both bookish and intellectual, but comparatively speaking, and even Hermione had admitted this when they and several other women of mutual acquaintance had went out for drinks with George's wife, Angelina, Audrey had the patience of Job, and a much stronger tendency to read the rule book, throw it over her shoulder, then proceed to break several of said rules. It may have been the drinks, but Audrey had admitted that the Sorting Hat had had a three-way argument as to her house: Slytherin, Ravenclaw, or Hufflepuff. Slytherin was struck off rather quickly, since she was not of a size that she could physically defend herself, and she was muggleborn. Ravenclaw was struck off because, while she was intellectual, she also had patience, loyalty, and a hard work ethic. Of her family, only she and Eddie had any magic at all. Eddie had been a Gryfffindor, a first-year while she was in her fifth.

She looked up from her musings as her inbox flared to life. Her _personal_ inbox, not her Auror Office one, her Emergency one that automatically forwarded to her physical location if she was out of the office, or even her departmental one issued to all St. Mungo's department heads. She picked up the note and chuckled. It was written on the back of a WWW receipt and just read, "Dree, are you free? Promise you won't laugh." She grabbed a piece of paper and scrawled on it, "You know me better than that, George. I won't laugh until AFTER I get you sorted." She then sent the message, attached to the previous one, "return to sender". Her friendship with George Weasley was a unique one. They had become friends after she had had to fix an experiment gone wrong about two years prior. It had left him with reindeer antlers, a tendency to sing _everything_, extreme dizziness and nausea, and an itchy rash. It had taken her two days to sort him completely out, and she had given him a standing invitation to floo directly to her office. She often needed a diversion when things got slow, and her ward was empty. He knew that he would have to wait if she had a more pressing case, and she got to see firsthand the results of some unexpected ingredient combinations. George also got somebody who could fix chemical foul-ups with a straight face. It was a mutually beneficial relationship for them both. It had even helped her to solve two cases so far. Who knew that powdered porcupine quills, if combined with acromantula webs, could produce a potent hallucinogen. (He had only had a low-level exposure.) Back in 1967, a potions master had done in his wife's paramour by spiking his drink with that exact chemical combination. Fortunately, the body had been intact for her to analyze, leading to an eventual conviction.

She looked up as her fireplace flared to life and George stepped out. Immediately, she was assailed by a horrible odor. Something like rotten eggs, skunk, and an open cesspool all rolled into one. "Dear God, George, what did you do?"

"I was modifying the U-No-Poo recipe to make it more poo-ey. I've been like this for about an hour now."

"Poo-ey? This goes beyond poo-ey. What have you tried so far?"

"Scourgify, augamenti, scourgify again."

"Get in the lab shower. The emergency one. I'm going to charm it to shoot tomato juice for a few minutes, so close your eyes. Clothes on. I'll just get it all in one go."

He complied, and she made the shower spray tomato juice for about ten minutes. It seemed to decrease the smell exponentially, so she gradually increased the ratio of water to tomato juice until it was pure water. She them went into cleaning and freshening charms, then turned off the water and did a few quick drying charms. "Please don't do that again, George. That was the worst thing I've ever smelled, and that's saying a lot."

"Worse than the morgue?"

"Yep."

"Worse than a box of dungbombs?"

"George, there aren't enough dungbombs in the world to compare."

He grinned, and Audrey quirked her mouth, trying not to laugh. "Here." She reached behind her and got a mild headache potion for each of them. "That was downright _foul_. Cheers."

They drank the potion, then went back to Audrey's office. George was giving her the rundown of what he had done chemically to modify the potion.

"You might want to try shredding instead of chopping and decrease by about..." She looked over as both her Emergency inbox and her Auror inbox went off. She grabbed the contents of both and paled visibly. "George," she said gravely, "go to my lobby and wait for your parents."

"What's wrong? Who is it, and why are they sending them to you?" he asked, genuinely afraid.

"I'll figure the first and last questions out. All I can show you is the name." She obscured everything on the file except for the name, then showed it to him. "Harry and Ron are bringing him in."

"Percy? What the hell happened to him?"

"George. Go. Your parents will need you, and I promise I'll get to the bottom of this."

"I know you will, Dree."

A moment after he left, the floo flared to life, and Audrey summoned a gurney.


End file.
